Super Tuesday, the Coming Clinton Presidency and other depressing news

Not just funny Bob, but very true. My choice has been Rubio from day one but if Trump is the GOP candidate, then I will not hold my nose and vote the GOP ticket as I did with McCain and Romney. this one I'll sit our because if what America wants is him or Hillary, then I know that I no longer recognize my countrymen and women. Thanks...an item for my WFUN-TV. S/F. Pace et Salute...JP. (Every day it seems I hear from conservatives who will not vote for Trump if he is the nominee. ~Bob)

Excerpt: But he can play rhetorical footsie with the KKK, reveal he thinks judges “sign bills,” subscribe to vile “truther” explanations of 9/11 and the Iraq War, embrace the health-care mandate, traffic in reprehensible sectarian tribalism and vow to weaken the First Amendment so he can exact vengeance on journalists who don’t kowtow to his Brobdingnagian ego — yet not shake loose his fans. That “success” has bred more success, as politicians jump on board the train. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie set a torch to his integrity by endorsing a man who stands against nearly everything Christie once claimed to believe, Christie has confirmed all the darker aspects of his reputation as a cynical, self-interested, spiteful bully.

Worth Reading: Donald Trump Is The Next Barack Obama: The difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama amounts only to whatever difference may exist between each emperor’s set of cronies. By Angelo Codevilla

Excerpt: The Obama years have brought America to the brink of transformation from constitutional republic into an empire ruled by secret deals promulgated by edicts. Civics classes used to teach: “Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, judges decide controversies, and we citizens may be penalized only by a jury of our peers.”

Nobody believes that anymore, because no part of it has been true for a long time. Barack Obama stopped pretending that it is. During the twentieth century’s second half, both parties and all branches of government made a mockery of the Constitution of 1789. Today’s effective constitution is: “The president can do whatever he wants so long as one-third of the Senate will sustain his vetoes and prevent his conviction upon impeachment.” Obama has been our first emperor. A Donald Trump presidency, far from reversing the ruling class’s unaccountable hold over American life, would seal it. Because Trump would act as our second emperor, he would render well-nigh impossible our return to republicanism. ... Angelo M. Codevilla is a fellow of the Claremont Institute, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University and the author of To Make And Keep Peace, Hoover Institution Press, 2014. (He also wrote Advice to War Presidents, which I consider a must-read. ~Bob)

Excerpt:Super Tuesday was a bad night for the anti-Trump forces and a bad night for Rubio. It’s not the end, but it’s a disappointing setback. The worst news for Trump foes: Trump has won ten states. Cruz has won four; Rubio, one. The best news for Trump foes: For all of his state wins, Donald Trump has 34.2 percent of the overall votes cast in the primary so far. Cruz and Rubio combined have 49.7 percent. In the past week, Trump’s rivals and a critical press have spotlighted the collapse and victims of Trump University, his past use of illegal immigrants on Trump Tower, his massive use of legal-immigrant temporary workers in his Florida resorts, the collapse of Trump Mortgage, his strange reluctance to passionately denounce David Duke and the KKK, and the fact that only$650,000 of the $6 million Trump raised for veterans can be accounted for. To top it off, they made fun of his orange spray tan and short fingers.

The Coming Clinton Presidency: Trump owns Super Tuesday, but Cruz and Rubio see glimmers of hope

It now appears that both parties will nominate life-long liberal with a history of shady dealings. Trump will have the baggage of NPD as bad as Obama's and no political experience. Voting for Trump is like going to the airport and demanding a plane with a new pilot who has never flown before. The Trump campaign will end like Trump University, Trump Mortgage Company, Trump Airlines and the Trump Taj Mahal, but probably not until November. I think he will carry 15 states, Hillary 35. His nomination hands the presidency to Hillary. I have felt the Republic was in dire straights since I published my book, The Coming Collapse of the American Republic over five years ago. I now think only an act of God can save it. I won't be here, but I ache for my grandkids. ~Bob

Excerpt: A well-funded super PAC is escalating its assault on Donald Trump with a devastating new television advertisement that portrays the Republican presidential front-runner as a predatory huckster who scammed working- and middle-class Americans. A 60-second ad, which will begin airing Wednesday on stations across the country at the cost of more than $1 million, centers on Trump University, the billionaire mogul's for-profit enterprise that promised to teach students the tricks of the real estate trade and is now defunct and the subject of a fraud suit.

Excerpt: The "Super Tuesday" primaries may be a turning point for America — and quite possibly a turn for the worse. After seven long years of domestic disasters and increasing international dangers, the next President of the United States will need extraordinary wisdom, maturity, depth of knowledge and personal character to rescue America.

Instead, if the polls are an indication, what we may get is someone with the opposite of all these things, a glib egomaniac with a checkered record in business and no track record at all in government — Donald Trump. If so, the downward trajectory of America over the past seven years may well continue on into the future, to the point of no return.

Worth Reading: Donald Trump: How to Fight Him. What Cruz and Rubio need to do now. By Victor Davis Hanson

Excerpt: The problem for Trump is not just that he cannot score points on ideas and so he monotonously strikes back with ad hominem slurs, but also that, off the cuff and in passing, he is capable of saying almost anything. Over two hours, those anythings — especially when they are windows into his past and his present values — finally add up. So far Trump’s supporters have put up with his hypocrisies, self-contradictions, and unhinged statements — as if all that is felt to be a small price for hearing him pulverize Washington careerists, media flunkies, hypocritical grandees, and Republican sellouts. Americans are sick and tired of Black Lives Matter careerists and abject racists calling them racists, of wealthy apartheid liberals lecturing them about their white-privileged middle-class status, of crony green capitalists with huge carbon footprints, of hypocritical multimillionaire Malibu scolds, of the media hectoring the 52 percent who pay income taxes and canonizing the 48 percent who do not, of illegal aliens laying down to them a set of ultimatums while praising the country they were glad to leave and ankle-biting the one they want to stay in, of elites worrying more about the feelings of Islamic radicals than the terrorism that jihadists commit, and of our elected representatives borrowing more money for more government programs that make things far worse for everybody except those who run them.

Excerpt: The challenge for people who fear a Trump presidency even more than others covet it comes down to: How do you convince the inconvincible? How do you persuade the proudly unpersuadable? First, you probably should buy them a drink, and then you should try not to insult them. (I’m talking to myself here.) Too often we in the media say or write things that feel more like a put-down than an observation. To say, for example, that someone is “undereducated” (a pollster term), which is true of a large portion of Trump’s base, isn’t the same as calling someone stupid. But it might feel that way if you’re on the receiving end. Most people know that college doesn’t endow intelligence. It’s all in how you say things, which one wishes Trump appreciated more. He isn’t just coarse and rude, but is also often vile.

Excerpt: It is time for Republicans to seriously consider an exit strategy as they grapple with the rise of Trump. It may be necessary for men and women of principle within the party to set the self-detonation sequence as they escape the ship to a new party. Trump and his angry band of supporters are starting to board and the GOP, as an entity, will be a terrible place to stay for many elected officials. Already in Arizona the Democrats are attacking John McCain for saying he would support Donald Trump as the nominee. It is only going to get worse. An independent bid would be difficult because of the signature requirements in places like Texas, but Rick Perry could potentially mount a successful bid. However, it may be possible to launch a bid to adopt the Constitution Party as a new party of Republican resistance. The Constitution Party is in every state and would be an easier way to proceed than creating a new third party or launching an independent bid.

Excerpt: Conservative donors have engaged a major GOP consulting firm in Florida to research the feasibility of mounting a late, independent run for president amid growing fears that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination. A memo prepared for the group zeroes in on ballot access as a looming obstacle for any independent candidate, along with actually identifying a viable, widely known contender and coalescing financial support for that person. The two states with the earliest deadlines for independent candidates, Texas and North Carolina, also have some of the highest hurdles for independents to get on the ballot, according to the research. (The Republican Party as an entity is not threatening. It is conservatives who are threatening. I'm with them. If Trump gets the nomination we will have a choice in November between two or three life-long liberals: Trump, Clinton or Sanders and maybe Bloomberg. ~Bob)

Excerpt: “If Trump wins decisively, then conservatives are everything we've ever been accused of being: racist, nativist, xenophobic and totally comfortable with big government as long as it benefits people we happen to like,” said Tom Nichols, a senior contributor at online magazine The Federalist and professor at the NavalWarCollege.

Excerpt: “When are they coming to airlift me out?” Chris Christie’s eyes are pleading. “Please tell me that they are coming and that it is soon.” But then his expression hardens. Chris Christie knows that they are not coming back for him. This is his life now. Soon he must return to the plane onto which Trump humiliatingly sent him before. Soon he must return to the small cupboard under the stairs where he is kept and occasionally thrown small slivers of metaphorical raw meat. When he asked to be part of Trump’s cabinet he never thought to specify “presidential cabinet, of course, not a literal cabinet underground where the ventilation is poor and there is no light.” It just did not occur to him. Why would it?

Exclusive: China to lay off five to six million workers, earmarks at least $23 billion

Excerpt: China aims to lay off 5-6 million state workers over the next two to three years as part of efforts to curb industrial overcapacity and pollution, two reliable sources said, Beijing's boldest retrenchment program in almost two decades. China's leadership, obsessed with maintaining stability and making sure redundancies do not lead to unrest, will spend nearly 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to cover layoffs in just the coal and steel sectors in the next 2-3 years. The overall figure is likely to rise as closures spread to other industries and even more funding will be required to handle the debt left behind by "zombie" state firms

Excerpt: Comptroller General of the United State Gene Dodaro warned danger lies ahead if policymakers don’t change the country’s unsustainable long-term fiscal path. “Growing debt held by the public, which is now about 74 percent of the Gross Domestic Product could limit the federal government’s flexibility to address new or unforeseen challenges, such as another economic downturn or a large-scale disaster,” Dodaro said....The Defense Department is particularly troubling, GAO and Weinberg said, because it can’t track its finances or property. (Remember that ISIS tank parade after the US-trained "rebels" fled and abandoned their equipment/supplies? --Barb)

Worth Reading: Are Working Class Gripes Real, Or Exaggerated? If you just look in economic terms, America’s bottom third has it better than 99 percent of people in world history. They’ve still got legitimate grievances. By Joy Pullman

Excerpt: If you just look at things in terms of economic and physical prosperity, the working-class outrage Donald Trump represents makes absolutely no sense. Things have never been better for America’s bottom third. If looked at in economic terms, they’re easily the global 1 percent now, not to mention by far the historical 1 percent. Ancient emperors would have killed to have the medical facilities available today to illegal immigrants in the United States—and anyone else, for that matter—at no cost to them. The hot showers I enjoy each morning cost me something between two and three minutes of working time. Just about anybody can have a hot shower nowadays, even homeless people (shelters are everywhere); but practically nobody could 100 years ago. A century ago, one in ten U.S. children died before their first birthday. Now, almost no children do.

Worth Reading: Telling it like it is? Americans now want politicians who tell it like it isn’t

Excerpt: This election cycle, politicians’ promises have gotten bigger, bolder and less tethered to reality than those of previous presidential races. Voters appear to want candidates who will deliver nothing short of their wildest partisan dreams (and delusions), alongside the unconditional silence and submission of their ideological adversaries. ... Donald Trump, whose most attractive quality is supposedly his unfiltered frankness, has built his campaign around the preposterous promise that Mexico will pay for a “big, beautiful wall” on the southern U.S. border, despite all evidence to the contrary — including both common sense and loud, unequivocal refusals from Mexicanleaders themselves. He also promises that he can get government to swiftly, cheaply and “humanely” round up and deport 11 million people living in the shadows. And his base — which has, until now, long believed in government incompetence and inefficacy above almost any other political principle — willingly suspends disbelief.

Excerpt: Are the Republicans paying attention? In Oklahoma and Arkansas, the Club For Growth relentlessly attacked Donald Trump with advertisements and hurt him significantly. In Oklahoma, Cruz won and in Arkansas, Trump barely won.

Negative ads do work and just have not been tried. In fact, since Rubio and Cruz have begun aggressively attacking Donald Trump, Trump’s polling has declined, late deciders have turned against him, and there is hope that he can be stopped.

Obama's PC Librarian of Congress Pick Much Less Accomplished Than Predecessors

Excerpt: In this, the final year of his tenure, President Obama seems as determined as ever to divide America by race and gender, and to push the nation backwards to a past where race and gender were dominating considerations in employment, academia, politics, and culture. Unfortunately, President Obama sees life through the same divisive lens, emphasizing differences of race and gender at virtually every opportunity. The most recent manifestation of this crimped vision is his nomination of Dr. Carla D. Hayden as the 14th librarian of Congress. (Who reads any more? She is diversified! She's black. Qualifications met for the TRANSFORMATION of the US away from those hated white Judeo-Christians. --Barb)

Excerpt: The report also notes the rule may be illegal because it creates authorities which Congress never explicitly granted the department. The department also bypassed the Securities and Exchange Commission to advance the rule. The report urges lawmakers to rein the department in before it unilaterally expands its own power. “Members of Congress from both parties have expressed serious concerns about the rule,” the report added. “Congress has a variety of options to block or delay implementation of the DOL rule, including defunding, voting the measure down, and rewriting the law. These options are not mutually exclusive.”

Religion of Peace News

Important: Obama wants more Syrian refugees in the U.S. By Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org

Excerpt: What could possibly go wrong? Last February, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. And the Lebanese Education Minister recently said that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country. Meanwhile, 80% of migrants who have recently come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria aren’t really from Syria at all. So why are they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe, and now the U.S. as well? An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.” These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate: “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.” We are waiting in the U.S. as well.

Excerpt: But the government assures us it is going to vet the huge number of Muslim refugees that Obama is bringing into the United States, and make sure there are no jihad terrorists among them. How are they going to do that?

EU may have to limit migrant benefits like UK, says Hamburg mayor. Olaf Scholz says other 27 member states must review their approach to access to welfare after UK agreed emergency brake

Excerpt: While it may be possible for Germany to make the proposed change unilaterally if it is ruled that this does not breach EU law, Scholz said, the current EU welfare system will not survive in an era of globalisation unless it is reformed in some way. “If we recognise that free movement of labour is one of the opportunities of the EU, and sometimes the best way to increase your income, it is necessary to be very careful how we organise that right,” he said. “If we do not think about this now, in five or 10 years’ time, we may not be able to solve the problem because it has become too big and no one is willing to compromise.” (How many US folks realize they are being globalized without their consent by their "representatives"? This article about EU, but US involved in the movement as well, just a lot of smoke screen with Hollywood worship, sports stories and election spats. --Barb)

Excerpt: "I direct my talk specifically to those who support real change, especially the youth," it begins, before declaiming "the tyranny of the control of capital by large companies" that has evidently harmed the American economy. The letter is undated but appears to be written around 2009, with references to the recent election of "Barack Husayn" and the "six years" of war waged by President George W. Bush in Iraq.

Liberal hitchhikes through Middle East to prove Muslims are peaceful. Was raped and murdered instead

Excerpt: The 10 American sailors were on an unfamiliar assignment and running behind schedule.

Setting off from Kuwait en route to Bahrain, the U.S. sailors had never navigated across the Persian Gulf in small patrol boats, and they were unaccustomed to traveling such a long distance in vessels designed for shorter missions in coastal waters or rivers.

Their routine mission on Jan. 12 turned into a nightmare when they strayed into Iranian waters near FarsiIsland in the Persian Gulf. Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) surrounded the two U.S. boats and made the crew members kneel in surrender with their hands on their head. Iran released a video of the humiliating scene and held the sailors for 16 hours, before a flurry of phone calls between top diplomats in Washington and Tehran secured their release. (Last minute repairs on boats in an active overseas zone? Sailors not ready for refueling operations? Inability to figure out where they were? And best of all, they were far better armed than the Iranian boats, but the officer in charge was afraid to create an incident? We need officers who aren't afraid to act for what is best for the nation, and that means not creating a propaganda incident those who hate and despise us will run on for the next 20 years. The answer was to go to battle stations, load up the guns, aim them, and start moving in the direction you want to go in, while screaming on the air for support from any and all of our people and allies. The Iranians would almost certainly have backed off, and if they didn't and died there, that would have sent a message that very badly needs to be sent, and after the mandatory screaming and massive protests in Tehran, it would all die down. That officer needs to find a new career, maybe as an insurance salesman. --Del)

Politicians insisting that the latest Islamic jihad attack has nothing to do with Islam have become a familiar feature of the mainstream media landscape, but last Saturday, Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans went them all one better. Speaking at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Evans declared: We’re all Muslims deep down. We all yearn for peace. (Gotten the chip or drank the Kool-Aid. --Barb)

Violent extremists, criminals and foreign fighters are part of the daily refugee flow into Europe, the top NATO commander in Europe told lawmakers, "masking the movement" of these dangerous elements and heightening the potential for an attack. In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove said ISIS is "spreading like a cancer" within this mix, "taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations" and the United States. Breedlove later told reporters that he has asked for more U.S. forces to be permanently based in Europe, which is facing threats from a more aggressive Russia as well as ISIS. (But POTUS and Dems want them for voters.....part of that TRANSFORMATION. --Barb)